


Ten Years After

by QuessParaya



Category: Mobile Suit Gundam, Mobile Suit Gundam Char's Counterattack
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, biography
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-04
Updated: 2018-05-04
Packaged: 2019-05-01 22:20:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14530464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuessParaya/pseuds/QuessParaya
Summary: Ten years after the events of Char's Counterattack, Nanai Miguel reflects on her relationship with Char.





	Ten Years After

**Author's Note:**

> Added 3 May 2018: This is the OG fic, y'all :) The first one about Nanai and Char. It is actually the prequel to As It Stands: The Life and Times of Nanai Miguel. I wrote this fic in 2002 after a series of devastating events in my personal life. In the original notes, I said that this idea was spurred by a visit to my father, who was dying as a result of being hit by a drunk driver right before I wrote this fic. 
> 
> \--
> 
> Original notes:
> 
> Disclaimer: I don’t own Gundam, Char’s Counterattack, or any of the characters. They are copyrighted to Bandai, Sunrise and a host of other corporations and individuals. 
> 
> A/N: This is the culmination of many, many days thinking of what it would be like for Nanai to say how she felt about Char after his death. I finally got the words to this on a two-hour drive back from the hospital where I was visiting my father.
> 
> There may be a slight measure of OOCness on the part of Nanai, but her character is never really explained enough for me to get a good grasp of her true emotions.
> 
> Spoilers for the end of Char’s Counterattack lie herein, read at your own risk.
> 
> For Tia and Kishiria, who prodded me enough to get this thing DONE and for me to stop complaining about it.

I can still remember, in some respects, how it all ended. I knew, or at least inferred, that the purpose of your Neo-Zeon was not to create a new world for space-born people to live in, but as an excuse to defeat Amuro once and for all. I signed on as Chief Newtype Operations Officer, believing wholeheartedly in the cause, never imagining that I would fall in love with the man of legend and lore, the Red Comet, Char Aznable.

I walk through my apartment now, ten years after the end of the war…the Third War of Independence, as I have heard many a spacenoid call it. I don’t know exactly where I stand on all these issues of war, politics, and independence now, because every time I hear about them, I remember you. And I cry.

I cry because I wonder what it would have been like if things had been…different. If you were comfortable in your own skin, and willing to shed the identity of Captain Char Aznable to be wholly and completely Casval Rem Deikun. I remember as I held you one night, saying, more to myself than to you, that you were having trouble accepting Casval’s identity. Now I just wonder if it was a political ploy. I wonder, too, what it would be like, if we shared what would be called ‘a simple kind of life’, no wars, no Neo-Zeons, no Amuro.

And I kick myself. Because I know that will never happen.

I don’t know why you ever loved me. Heck, in truth, even when locked in that frenzied appeal to our senses that they call lovemaking, when you spluttered out you loved me as you came to a head, I didn’t believe you. I wanted to, wanted to so badly, in fact, that I let it blind me. I walked around the house we shared, the Newtype facility, the ships, hell, in front of the entire Neo-Zeon army, thinking ‘he loves me, I know he does.’ Now let it be known that I am a woman who bases herself entirely in fact, but love can be a blinding thing.

I knew about Lalah. There was no possible way I couldn’t, and that’s why you wanted Amuro dead. I heard the stories, even before you told me. And I know that you wanted her, so desprately, to guide you, to lead you on her path, because she is everything you are not but always wanted to be in your heart. You wanted her innocence, her youth, her trust. I know that what you saw in those huge green eyes wasn’t a partner, but a mother, a spiritual guide and your leader. And I tried. I can honestly say I tried to be your leader, your guide, your mentor. Even your mother. But I don’t know how, to this day, I could have ever fulfilled both roles as your lover and your mother. Paired together they sound sick, incestuous. But apart the words speak volumes. But somehow, on some level, I feel I did, and I take that part with me, and I will cherish it until the day I die.

And I loved you. God I loved you. I would have gone to the ends of space for you. I gave up everything I had for you, to be near you, to love you, to be with you. And you threw it all away for a rivalry that in my eyes was petty, and the sin forgivable. But it wasn’t to you, and that is a reality that I will have to accept, because it killed you. I cried when I felt you slipping away from me, and I still cry, to this day, because it feels like my heart and my soul have been ripped away from me, irrecovably.

Maybe Gyunei was right, that our relationship was for the benefit of politics, but I loved you, Char. I really did.


End file.
